Roche drug cocktail doubles chance of holding lung cancer at bay

ZURICH (Reuters) - Adding Roche's immunotherapy Tecentriq to
older drugs doubled the percentage of lung cancer patients who
survived a year without their disease advancing, an outcome some
experts labeled unprecedented.

Thirty-seven percent of patients in a closely watched clinical
trial who got Tecentriq, Avastin and chemotherapy reached the
one-year mark without their cancer progressing (PFS), according
to data released on Thursday.

For patients getting only Avastin and chemotherapy, that fell to
18 percent.

Thursday's release of specific numbers at a European Society for
Medical Oncology meeting in Geneva could further fan investor
optimism the Swiss drugmaker is gaining on rivals Merck & Co
and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

“This is very, very promising," Dr. Solange Peters, the head of
Medical Oncology at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois
in Lausanne, Switzerland, said on the latest results.

"Doubling PFS (progression-free survival) at one year is
something we have not seen with any targeted therapy in
unselected patients to date."

Roche said it would submit the results to regulatory authorities
around the world.

It is counting on Tecentriq to help replace revenue from its $20
billion-per-year trio of Avastin, Herceptin and Rituxan whose
patents have expired or will shortly, exposing them to cheaper
competition.

Lung cancer is easily the biggest oncology market, with about
220,000 people in the United States due to be diagnosed this year
and 155,000 seen dying from the disease often caused by smoking.

In Roche's 1,202-patient study, Tecentriq cut the risk of disease
progression by 38 percent, within the range analysts have said
would signify a robust result.

Patients getting Roche's immunotherapy survived an average of 8.3
months without their disease getting worse, compared with a PFS
of 6.8 months for those getting chemotherapy and Avastin.

OVERALL SURVIVAL

For a set of patients who expressed a specific biomarker called
"Teff" that Roche is exploring to help identify people who may
respond best, the results were more robust, with PFS at 11.3
months for the Tecentriq group versus 6.8 months.

Roche, which said no new safety problems cropped up, is still
awaiting Impower 150's overall survival data in the first half of
2018.